First Secondment at IFSTTAR


Being at IFSTTAR for my first secondment was a great experience I could ever had as part of my Ph.D. and life; besides living in Paris for two months, I had wonderful networking opportunities there. I started my secondment before Christmas holiday, it was nice to see French culture and food for the New Year and spending the holiday in Paris.
I was working there with Maria Nesterova (ESR6) and I had the chance to have the guidance of Franziska Schmidt at IFSTTAR. I had a challenge at the beginning when I wanted to start with the planned program I had before I go to IFSTTAR, There were lots of lessons I had learned at this stage. First of all, we need to have at least three meetings before going to a secondment to be sure everything will match our interest, available data and etc. Secondly, would be good to study those contents you will work on them as part of your study during the secondment that you are not still familiar with in advance. This will help you to save time, as usually secondments are short, you will just apply the methodology during your secondment to get the desired results you are looking for. Third, it would be good to have a detailed plan of your research during your secondment. I studied lots of articles to find out proper common work at IFSTTAR with the available data, which broaden my knowledge to new windows.
‘Risk assessment of welded details in the deck of the Millau Viaduct based on the Weight-In-Motion data’ was our final agreement which I will explain you more in my future blog.

The best part of my secondment was the opportunity to have the chance to participate in JCSS meeting and listen to them and meet professors, leaders and pioneers in my field of study.
I was also lucky to participate in the lecture by Bernard Jacob about ‘Fracture mechanics approach to fatigue, deterministic and probabilistic view’ which was so helpful for me at IFSTTAR as a learning activity.
Furthermore, I have visited IFSTTAR in Nantes and we had a site visit with ESR 6 and ESR 1 of a wind turbine. This visit was exciting for me because it was first time that I saw the inside of a wind turbine organised by Valorem. Thank you, Hakim and Odile for organizing everything!


I was so lucky to have my mother with me, as I was so much under pressure during my stay in Paris. Thanks Mom...

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